Turtle, verb: To withdraw and and shrink, like a turtle hiding in its shell.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Everyone grows up faster than me

I've felt like this before, like people grow up, and like I don't, and I get left behind. I don't know how to adjust to adult life. When I was younger, I was known for being particularly mature, now, as a young adult, I feel trapped between being a child and an adult, where other people my age are making this transition, and I'm stuck behind, unable to follow.

I don't know how to take care of myself. I don't know how to do things that others find simple. As I've been getting older, my challenges have been becoming more apparent, because being in school was easy for me, but this isn't. And watching around me, other people aren't having this. They went through, they had discomfort as a teenager, they are still not entirely settled as young adults, but they are settling into adult life, getting jobs, and taking care of themselves. They're growing up.

I'm not. I'm stuck here. And I'm left behind.

I've felt left behind here at a few points in the past - I didn't grow up the same as other already. I really miss my friends from high school. They grew up before me. They grew up when they went to college in ways I didn't, and when they made new friends, I only found jonored, and when they started jobs, I hadn't, and they're ahead of me in life.

And now jonored's interviewing, and I'm terrified. He knows this about me, he knows about my impairments, we've been working on me being less dependent on him, but I'm scared, because he's growing up in ways that I'm not too, just like everyone else has. I have to trust him to not leave me behind. I trust him, I trust him to pull me along, going to work and coming home to me, having us work on my ability to work at the pace I can manage (which is currently volunteering one day a week at a school that I want to write about - I'm volunteering at a school for children on the autistic spectrum).

I don't know what to do here as everyone else around me grows up to an adult life and I'm only dragged along behind because I'm not capable of doing everything they are.